The Lunam Ceremony (Book One) (2 page)

I look around the room one last time. I won’t miss the twin-size bed I grew out of five years ago. I won’t miss the smell of mold in the closet or the warm desert air that creeps in through the torn weather stripping around my window. I don’t have posters on my walls or stuffed animals on my bed. Holding sentimental value in toys or obsessing over boy bands are human connections that Layla didn’t want me to form. She tried, but I still love One Direction, and nothing will ever change that. Layla allowed me toys when I was little, but every year before Christmas I would donate my old toys to Goodwill. Some years she let me keep one or two. I had a stuffed wolf for six years; he was the last to go. After I started high school, clothes became my obsession. Like the toys, Layla only allowed the necessities. Luckily, she and I wear the same size, so I dipped into her closet whenever possible. Not that she had a lot of options either. Layla always kept things minimal. We have four plates, four glasses, two spoons, two forks, a knife set, one pot, one pan. No serving utensils or trays—we never needed them since we never really had company. We’ve lived in this apartment for fourteen years, but it has never been a home. The apartment came furnished and we never added anything personal to it. It was always just temporary. Layla could’ve raised me in her pack and spared us both the agony and the fighting that ensued when I wanted to go to summer camp or join the Girl Scouts. Instead she brought me here and dangled a life in front of me that I could never have. Whenever I asked her why we live here and not in the pack, she always gave the same answer. So I would grow up to be a strong leader. She said growing up outside the pack would allow me to become my own person. To think for myself and see the bigger picture. I guess I’ll find out what that means in a few days. My entire life has been a countdown to the day we go back. I want to say I’m excited about Lunam, about finding my true love, but really I think I’m just happy to finally get out of this purgatory. The day has finally come when my life begins.

The road to the Lunam ceremony consists of a sixty-mile drive from the small desert town where I was raised to McCarran Airport in Las Vegas. The shuttle cost my mother one hundred hard-earned dollars. The shuttle is also late, and we have to rush through the airport to make our flight to San Francisco. Layla lets me have the window seat since this is my first time on a plane. She hands me a pack of gum and a magazine. “You’ll need the gum when we take off or else your ears will pop.” She folds a piece of gum into her mouth and shoves her purse under the seat in front her. I have no clue what she means by my ears popping, but I chew the gum anyway. I learned a long time ago never to question my mother. There’s no point; she’s always right.

We land an hour and a half later, and I decide flying is my new favorite thing. I’m lightheaded as we walk towards baggage claim. I’m finally out of Pahrump, Nevada. I take in everything. The smells, the people, the long line for the bathroom. I don’t care. Nothing is bringing me down. I want to see it all, starting with San Francisco, but Layla is on a schedule. Sightseeing is not on the itinerary. “We’ll come back someday and ride the cable car.” She pulls her bag from the carousel. “I promise, Kalysia.” She places her hand on my shoulder and smiles. Even though I want to sulk a little longer, her assurance makes me smile. My mother never breaks a promise.

I wonder how long it will be until we can come back. In a week I will be matched with a boy I’ve never met. We’ll be linked together for the rest of our lives. If I’m being honest, the one small perk about this whole Lunam thing would be the boys. What girl wouldn’t at least entertain the idea of love at first sight? Layla swears my match will blow all my book boyfriends out of the water. This is one fact I pray my mother isn’t wrong about. My mother’s relationship did not end in happily-ever-after. The details of my parents’ split are also a mystery to me. I don’t know anything about my father other than he was a pureblood alpha and is the leader of our pack. Every time I mustered the courage to ask about him, Layla’s eyes filled with so much sadness. I couldn’t bear to see her suffer, so I stopped inquiring. He isn’t worth it. In fourteen years, he’s never sent me a birthday card or even tried to see me. If there is one thing I’m not looking forward to in the next few days, it’s meeting my father.

The last leg of our journey is a one-hundred-mile drive to Middleton. A pit-stop on our way to Clearlake where the Lunam Ceremony is held. The man at the car rental counter gives Layla a convertible, even though she reserved an economy car. Typical. Layla is always getting special treatment because, well, she’s beautiful. She’s only nineteen years older than me, so people mistake us for sisters all the time, which is why I started calling her Layla in public. It stopped the crazy looks from old ladies in the grocery store.

The convertible is red and totally Layla. She insists on driving with the top down even though the sky is filled with low, menacing clouds. When I voice my weather concerns, Layla laughs. “Its fog, Kalysia, not clouds. My God, you’ve never seen fog,” she howls as we drive over the Golden Gate Bridge.

“I don’t care what it is. I’m freezing!” I yell from the cocoon I created with my hoodie. I was raised in the desert; I’m not used to the frigid cold air. I’ve never even seen snow, and now I’m about to live in it. Layla says my Lunam class will be settled somewhere in the Sierra Mountains. Which means snow, lots of snow. This year is the Altum Lunam. That’s when the last of the pureblood heirs, like me, turn eighteen and a new branch is formed. We are the future of our kind. The leaders. The shit.

Both of my parents are descendants of the first wolves turned by Gaia, which makes me some kind of super alpha. Every eighteen years for the last six hundred years, someone in my family has not only participated in Lunam, they also produced an heir for our bloodline. It’s overwhelming and also incredible. In six hundred years, nobody in my family tree has ever let our pack down. Now it’s my turn to continue the legacy. The pressure is very real. Especially since the only future I ever wanted consists of term papers and sororities. Maybe a few romances and a couple of walks of shame. I don’t want to be a leader. Not like this. I want to go to business school, run a company that does some good in the world. I don’t want an entire species riding on my shoulders.

“Can you at least turn on the heater?” I pull the strings on my hood until it tightens around my face and squeeze my knees to my chest. The cold isn’t really bothering me. I’m just complaining for the sake of complaining. I am giving up my dream for her bloodline, the least she can do is make sure I don’t freeze to death.

“Don’t worry, sweetie. On the other side of that mountain is blue sky, I guarantee it.” She points to the large mountain standing in front of us, its peak hidden by the dank, ocean-scented fog. We drive into the tunnel, and I can see the exit on the other side. The highway is bathed in sunlight. Bright, hot, burning sunbeams hit my face and I flinch. As always, my mother is right. I stay hidden under my hoodie to avoid a sunburn until the world around me disappears.

“Kalysia, wake up. We’re here.” Layla strokes my ratted, windblown hair.

My eyes are barely open when I hear someone yell, “She’s here!” A steady stream of women comes out of the small ranch-style house. My mother greets each woman with a hug. I see a few of them swipe tears from their cheeks, my mother included. I’ve never seen Layla emotional about anything or anyone.

“Kalysia, come here.” She waves me over. “This is my sister, Jessie.” Layla has told me a few stories about Jessie. I don’t think they’re actually sisters. Women in the same pack use the term as a sign of endearment. Sort of like sorority sisters. Layla introduces me to Bonnie next. They were also in the Lunam Ceremony together and became good friends. Bonnie’s daughters—Sophie Ann and Krystal, are fraternal twins a year younger than me. They will have their own Lunam next year. Every Lunam class for the next eighteen years will join the new pack, until the next Altum Lunam, when the last of the next pureblood heirs come of age. That won’t be for at least another nineteen years, when my child goes to Lunam. Just thinking about that gives me chills. I haven’t even met the father of my child, and its future is already set in stone. The cycle will never end. It will keep going as long as purebloods keep going to Lunam. Six hundred years of tradition can’t be wrong, can it?

A tall brown-haired beauty queen walks out of the house with a camera in her hand. She snaps a picture while Jessie introduces her. “This is my daughter, Tandy.” Layla leaves Jessie’s side to give Tandy a huge hug. “She came down for the weekend just to meet you. She has to go home tomorrow, back to her new baby boy.” Jessie’s face beams with pride as she gives Layla the baby’s stats. Weight: 8 pounds. Length: 22 inches. Name: Warner. Current age: 2 weeks.

“You look amazing,” I tell Tandy. Her body looks as fit as mine, and I work out, a lot.

“Thanks, but it’s just nature. We are back to true form within a week.” Tandy twirls and the ladies laugh.

“I don’t get it.” I feel like I’m being left out of a joke.

“Why don’t you girls go chat while we get dinner started?” Jessie hasn’t let go of Layla since we arrived. She pulls her away, and I feel like this is the beginning of the end.

Tandy loops her arm around mine and leads me into the house. Jessie and Bonnie live together with Bonnie’s daughters. I walk into the house and directly into the living room. The first thing I notice are the pictures that cover the walls. There is a large framed photo of Bonnie and a handsome man in a military uniform.

“That’s our dad,” Krystal tells me. She walks up to the photo, kisses her fingers then taps the man’s face. “He died in a helicopter accident in Afghanistan or Pakistan. I can never remember where exactly.”

“It was
Kabul
,” Sophie Ann says as she walks past me into the hall and disappears.

“I’m sorry,” I say to Krystal.

“It’s cool, it happened a long time ago.” She shrugs and follows her sister out of the room.

I’m here two minutes and I’m already blown away. I thought our kind lived and died for the pack. I guess we can also live and die for our country.

Over the next hour I learn more about myself than I have in eighteen years with my mom. For starters, our bodies heal quickly after our fifteenth birthday, which is why Tandy looks like she stepped out of a Victoria’s Secret catalog a two weeks after giving birth. Our healing process is accelerated when it comes to natural injuries like childbirth, minor cuts, and bruises. A bullet to the head or a knife to the chest will kill us just like a human. I think back over the last three years, and I can’t recall having any injury worth remembering. Minor cuts and bruises never really bothered me. I run ten miles a day and never get sore. I always thought it was conditioning and training. I wonder why Layla never told me about this convenient trait? Maybe because she knew I’d test it. Slicing my hand to see how fast I heal is so something I would’ve done. Part of me wants to go to the kitchen and do it now.

In between her schooling me on how this whole wolf thing works, Tandy talks about her son, Warner. She has a gazillion pictures on her cell phone. Warner eating, Warner pooping, Warner burping, Warner puking. “I know it seems crazy having a kid at our age, but I couldn’t be happier.” Tandy sneaks a shot of rum in her diet coke then sits on the sofa beside me. “Hopefully, you’ll get knocked up your first try.”

I am mid-sip when Tandy starts talking about me having a baby. I literally choke on my drink. It’s some sort of beer that Jessie cooked up. She said the drinking age doesn’t apply to something she brews in her backyard. The ale is dark and tastes sort of nutty. Even though I’ve only drank half a glass, I already feel buzzed. I clear my throat and tell Tandy I don’t want to think about that yet. She asks me what I’m afraid of.